


Aberration

by CardboardMoose



Category: Death Note
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CardboardMoose/pseuds/CardboardMoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>""Kira is the protector of the weak" and Matsuda believes this, honestly and truly, and Light could almost laugh because this is just too easy."<br/>For OneSentence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aberration

**#01 – Walking**  
Light's walk has changed over the past six years - now he walks with his chin held higher and a grace in his movements that his quiet, teenage self did not possess - Matsuda finds himself watching as if hypnotised one day, and feels his stomach somersault at what this might mean.

 **#02 - Waltz**  
At the NPA New Year's party (read: miserable office piss-up), Light whirls around the dance floor with Misa giggling in his arms; Matsuda slouches in a chair, nursing a beer and carefully schooling his face into jollity.

 **#03 - Wishes**  
Even with cardiac arrest victims dropping like flies around them, Matsuda wishes that the Kira case could last forever; without Light's continued presence, he doesn't know what he'd do.

 **#04 - Wonder**  
Light and Ryuzaki are bickering again, high intellectual concepts flying between them like tennis balls; Matsuda can only sit and watch in wonder, though he still thinks Light's arguments - what he understands of them - are better.

 **#05 - Worry**  
Light is Misa's boyfriend and of course he hugs and holds her, even if makes Matsuda sick to his stomach; besides, he knows that the touches Light gives him linger for longer, and that's enough to banish the worry from his mind.

 **#06 - Whimsy**  
Light is so _serious_ all the time, and Matsuda makes it his mission to get him to lighten up _somehow_ , though none of his plans seem to have worked yet.

 **#07 - Waste/Wasteland**  
The twisted fuck-story of the innocent-hearted detective and the idealistic murderer is much more interesting than the harsh wastes of the Shinigami realm, thinks Ryuk; and he laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

 **#08 - Whiskey and rum**  
It's over a drink - more accurately, _several_ drinks of increasing potency - that Matsuda first lays his tentative hand over Light's; it's over another, some time later, that Light idly wonders aloud if, perhaps, Kira might be right all along - and Matsuda's so far gone, now, that another few feet into depravity just don't matter anymore.

 **#09 - War**  
"We're waging a war, Matsuda," Light murmurs into his ear one night, "A war against evil, and I want you standing by my side."

 **#10 - Weddings**  
The members of the Task Force aren't friends - they don't really have anything in common but the obvious, don't go to each other's weddings or dinner parties or Christmas celebrations - but they're close enough for Light and Matsuda to share a desperate fuck in an out-of-the-way office when the deaths are mounting and Kira's escaped them yet again.

 **#11 - Birthday**  
Matsuda's only human, after all, and would really like to go out and get pissed on his birthday; nevertheless, he stays in the Task Force building 'til the early hours, because Light's there and that's all that matters.

 **#12 - Blessing**  
It's ludicrous, of course, but at Soichiro's funeral Matsuda wishes only that he'd had the Deputy Director's blessing on his whatever-it-was with Light - not that he'd ever have granted it, or that he'd have had the courage to ask.

 **#13 - Bias**  
Of course, Matsuda's biased, but he still maintains that Light's a better detective than Ryuzaki, no matter what the statistics might say.

 **#14 - Burning**  
Light is cool and calculated but his touch is like fire, and Matsuda wants nothing more than to burn.

 **#15 - Breathing**  
After the warehouse, after the gunshots and the heart attack and terrible, terrible truth, Matsuda goes home and curls up under his sheets and tries to remember how to breathe without sobbing.

 **#16 - Breaking**  
Light and Misa are engaged, and of course he's happy for them, but this doesn't stop Matsuda going home and breaking every glass in his apartment one by one, hands shaking and teeth sinking deep into his lower lip.

 **#17 - Belief**  
"Kira is the protector of the weak" and Matsuda believes this, honestly and truly, and Light could almost laugh because this is just _too easy._

 **#18 - Balloon**  
Matsuda sees a hot-air balloon in the sky one day and thinks of how much he wants to fly away, to float above the world with Light, free from Kira and the NPA and everything that gets in the way of _them._

 **#19 - Balcony**  
Matsuda is considerably less inebriated than he appears, and each drunken stagger is carefully orchestrated for the appreciation of the Yotsuba group members; a few seconds later, as he plunges off the balcony, mind filled with everything that could go wrong with this plan, he blocks out all the doubts with one thought - "I'm doing this for Light."

 **#20 - Bane**  
Ryuzaki couldn't know, of course, about what Light and Matsuda did in the quiet hours when the Task Force building was all but deserted; by the end of Light's lengthy, privacy-eliminating tethering to the genius detective, Matsuda had a hard time looking at a pair of handcuffs without gritting his teeth in frustration.

 **#21 - Quiet**  
Light has requested quiet so he can think - Matsuda forces himself to shut up just to stay close to him.

 **#22 - Quirks**  
They're a long way from toothbrush-in-the-bathroom, but they've gotten to the point of knowing each other's quirks, so Matsuda brings Light his coffee with two sugars, and Light lets their fingers brush as he takes the mug (which is all the reward Matsuda needs.)

 **#23 - Question**  
Of course one didn't question the morality of the Kira case in front of the others - but Matsuda, full of ideals and doubts, let slip his thoughts, and after that it was only a matter of time for Light to have him utterly.

 **#24 - Quarrel**  
Light's getting sick of the kicked-puppy looks he's getting from the other side of the room, so he reaches out a hand and Matsuda lets himself be pulled into an embrace, quarrel forgotten - he doesn't see Light's expression over his shoulder, and perhaps that's just as well.

 **#25 - Quitting**  
Matsuda made himself quit the stupid, carcinogenic habit of his boyhood, but all the willpower in the world couldn't make him stop needing Light, not now.

 **#26 - Jump**  
A year to the day since he lost damn near everything, and Matsuda's standing out on the balcony of his shitty apartment, wondering if he has the courage to jump but knowing somewhere deep inside that whatever afterlife he gets, Light won't be there, so there's no point in even trying.

 **#27 - Jester**  
Matsuda's the jester of the group, always ready with a daft joke or tension-killing quip; he likes to tell himself this doesn't make him come off as stupid, but he knows that Light will never think of him as anything but, and it _hurts._

 **#28 - Jousting**  
It's not quite the knights of old, but there's shocking force in the impact of foot and face, and Matsuda, watching on the CCTV, has to fight the urge to rip Ryuzaki's stupid legs off for touching his Light like that.

 **#29 - Jewel**  
There were jewels in the world that Matsuda valued less highly than Light smiling at him, for him, open and honest and beautiful.

 **#30 - Just**  
It's not flowers or moonlight or poetry, just office desks and late-night shifts and a never-ending struggle for justice (whatever that might be), but it's _theirs_ and Matsuda wants to think it means something.

 **#31 - Smirk**  
Matsuda's sleeping, looking pale and vulnerable in the light filtering in through the blinds; Light, one arm over his waist, allows himself a satisfied smirk at another one under his spell.

 **#32 - Sorrow**  
It takes four tries before Matsuda can bring himself to go to the Yagami family grave after everything is over - the first three times, he had to turn back, shoulders crushed and lungs aching from the sorrow.

 **#33 - Stupidity**  
Matsuda's nightmare: one day, his foolishness will end with Light's heart stopping and his world ending.

 **#34 - Serenade**  
There are more ambulances around these days, what with the constant stream of cardiac arrests; the sirens serenade them as they lie together in the pre-dawn, and Matsuda buries his face in Light's shoulder to muffle the sound.

 **#35 - Sarcasm**  
Matsuda wishes he could always tell when Light is being sarcastic - it makes him feel awkward and young in a way he'd almost forgotten since his schooldays.

 **#36 - Sordid**  
There's something obscene in the way Light whispers into Matsuda's ear, seductive promises of forever and and togetherness and _when this is all over._

 **#37 - Soliloquy**  
Light is ranting, his smile discordant, his eyes alternately wide with madness and narrow with anger; every word is like a needle in Matsuda's flesh, until he can no longer hear anything but the man he loves taunting him with every lie and every touch.

 **#38 - Sojourn**  
During Light's incarceration, Matsuda barely leaves the building, watching the CCTV and hating himself for wanting the killings to start again so Light can be proved innocent.

 **#39 - Share**  
Matsuda shares his childhood fears, and his dreams, and his - please don't tell the others - secret thoughts of Kira's righteousness; Light shares very little, really, but it's so beautifully spun in an exquisite lattice of lies that Matsuda doesn't notice and falls in love anyway.

 **#40 - Solitary**  
Light looks so _alone_ in that cell, trussed up like a madman or a murderer, and Matsuda wants nothing more than to reach out and touch him, to let him know he hasn’t abandoned him.

 **#41 - Nowhere**  
For the six years after Ryuzaki's death, the investigation goes round in circles - to be honest, Matsuda doesn't mind, because he's standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Light and that can never last long enough.

 **#42 - Neutral**  
There's no way of remaining neutral in this conflict, and Matsuda would like to say that he opposes Kira because he thinks it's the right thing to do; but that would be a lie, because in the end he'd follow Light to the ends of the earth and that's all the reason he needs.

 **#43 - Nuance**  
Matsuda is getting good at deciphering Light's smiles - there are different ones for when he's just humouring him, when he's proud of him, when he's happy for him; he's still not sure what the one he gets when he mentions that, perhaps, Kira's not _totally_ evil means, but he's working on that.

 **#44 - Near**  
Matsuda - who does remember some of his high school English, because whilst he may not be a genius he's not a _complete_ idiot - sees dark irony in the fact that the boy whose name means closeness took everything he loved so far away.

 **#45 - Natural**  
After the fact, Matsuda spends a long time wondering how every touch that felt so natural at the time was, in truth, a lie; all the while, he nurses the tiny flame of hope in his heart, against all the odds of reason.

 **#46 - Horizon**  
Early-morning, and Matsuda can see the Task Force building rising above the horizon; he quickens his step, impatient to see Light after a too-long night alone.

 **#47 - Valiant**  
He's not a sodding white knight, not a hero like Ryuzaki (because that's the hero's reward, a valiant death, and he doesn't want that, not any more), but for once he'd like his contributions to the investigation to be acknowledged (as if Light needed another way to manipulate him.)

 **#48 - Virtuous**  
Light seemed so virtuous, pure and perfect like his name, and that just makes it so much harder for Matsuda to accept the truth.

 **#49 - Victory**  
Aizawa tells him he should be happy - Kira is dead, and the world is at peace again; Matsuda's not sure whether he wants to punch him or burst into tears, so he settles for going home and screaming into his hands.

 **#50 - Defeat**  
Light touches his arm, and Matsuda melts under his hand; it is then that Light knows that Matsuda is utterly, utterly beaten.


End file.
